


california christmastime

by fleurmatisse



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Bisexual Richie Tozier, Christmas, Fluff, Getting Together, Good Parents Maggie & Wentworth Tozier, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, the author has never been to san francisco but that won't stop them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21905656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurmatisse/pseuds/fleurmatisse
Summary: Grabbing his phone and jacket and the half of his uniform he could shed before crossing the line of partial nudity, Richie gets out of the car and walks up to the door with his key ring hooked around his finger, which is how he ends up almost stabbing the person waiting in the dark of the alcove.“Jesus Christ, Richie!” the person exclaims.Richie freezes. “Eds?”“Yeah, you big dummy,” Eddie says. “I didn’t come all the way from New York just for you to stab me with your keys.”aka richie's parents fly eddie out to san francisco for christmas. shenanigans ensue, including sightseeing, cookie making, and watching horrible christmas movies.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 98





	california christmastime

**Author's Note:**

> this holiday season let us forgive any mistakes about san francisco i may have made because i have never been farther west than tennessee thank u and amen

The first year Richie, Bev, and Ben have their own place, they decide to go all out for Christmas. Partially to celebrate the newfound freedom of no longer living in a dorm, and partially to make up for the fact that both Ben and Bev were going to Nebraska to spend the holiday break with Ben’s mom. Richie had been invited, but he did enough third-wheeling in San Francisco, and besides, Ben’s mom (very politely) didn’t like him very much.

But Richie won’t be spending Christmas alone, because his parents are flying out for the entire week of the 25th. Last Christmas, he’d been stuck working, and the Christmas before his parents had still been settling in from their move to Chicago, so it’s safe to say Richie is pretty excited, even if he is losing Bev and Ben.

Ben helps him clean up the house they’re renting before they leave, five days before Richie’s parents are set to fly in. It’s 50/50 whether it’ll stay clean, but Richie appreciates it and promises to worship the ground Ben walks on when he gets back.

Richie isn’t the kind of person to luxuriate in solitude, but he tries to enjoy the fact that, if he wanted, he could make the soup that Bev claims gives her a headache, play the music that Ben claims makes him feel like he’s going insane. He could walk around naked, if he _really_ wanted, but he sticks to staying clothed because it’s just this side of chilly. 

Two days after Richie has been left alone, he gets a call from his mother as he’s driving home from work. “Margaret!” he answers cheerfully.

“Richard,” his mom replies patiently. “Are you on your way home?”

“I am,” Richie says. “Why, are you planning to have me assassinated when I get back?”

He can pictures his mother’s eye roll as she sighs. “No, Richie, I am not planning to have you assassinated.”

“So it’s already in motion,” Richie says. “What a way to start my Christmas vacation.”

“Richie,” Maggie says.

“Yes, Mother,” Richie replies.

“Your father and I sent you something. It should be waiting for you when you get to the house.”

“Ooh, am I allowed to open it?”

“Is it Christmas?” his mother says, laughter in her voice.

“No,” he says, deflated. He perks up again a second later as he pulls onto his street. “I’m about to pull up to the house. Am I looking for something big or something small?”

“You’ll know it when you see it,” his mother says. “I have to go. I’ll see you soon.”

“Okay, love you,” Richie says, putting his phone in the cup holder once his mom has echoed the sentiment and hung up. He pulls into the parking space just in front of the front door, craning his neck to try and see if there’s a package waiting in the alcove, but it’s too dark to see past the very front of the opening. Grabbing his phone and jacket and the half of his uniform he could shed before crossing the line of partial nudity, he gets out of the car and walks up to the door with his key ring hooked around his finger, which is how he ends up almost stabbing the person waiting in the dark of the alcove.

“Jesus Christ, Richie!” the person exclaims.

Richie freezes. “Eds?”

“Yeah, you big dummy,” Eddie says. “I didn’t come all the way from New York just for you to stab me with your keys.”

Richie stares at the shape of him for a few dumb seconds, and then he launches himself at Eddie for a decidedly less violent reason. Eddie laughs and wraps his arms around Richie’s waist while Richie clutches his shoulders and rocks them side to side.

“What the fuck,” Richie says without letting go, his mind a loop of _EddieEddieEddie_ , bolstered by Eddie’s chin digging into his shoulder and the faint smell of his shampoo. “You said you were working all break.”

“I lied,” Eddie says easily. “Are we going to go inside any time soon? I kind of have to pee.”

Richie laughs and takes a step back to unlock the door. “Of course you do. Edward Kaspbrak, smallest bladder in the east—and now you’re in the west!”

“Yeah, yeah, very funny, now where’s the bathroom?”

Richie turns on the light and directs him straight back into the house, where the bathroom branches off from the kitchen. Eddie drops his bag just inside the front door as he goes. Richie watches him with what is probably a dopey smile, so it’s a good thing Eddie is preoccupied. Richie collects himself once Eddie is out of sight, taking a second to send his mom a text full of nothing but exclamation points before he hangs up his jacket and takes the rest of the stuff up to his room, hurrying to change before Eddie gets out of the bathroom. He thunders down the stairs just as the door opens, and Eddie comes out to hang his hoodie next to Richie’s jacket.

“So,” Eddie says, looking around the foyer-living rom combo, “give me the grand tour.”

“Well this is the living room,” Richie says, gesturing expansively to the small room. It’s only big enough to fit a love seat across from the TV, a two foot fiber optic tree nestled in the corner and Richie’s absolute favorite decoration sitting in the bay window. Eddie zeroes in on it immediately.

“Is this the legendary Kinky Kringle?” he asks, going to the window. He picks up the Santa with a green plaid suit and foot-long legs that are mostly covered by tall black boots. Richie grins.

“The man, the myth, the kinky bastard himself,” he confirms.

Eddie turns to Richie with Kinky Kringle held to his chest. “I’m taking him with me.”

“Over my dead body,” Richie says.

“That can be arranged,” Eddie replies.

Richie gasps and steps forward to cover Kinky Kringle’s ears. “No death threats in front of Santa! Do you want to be put on the naught list?”

Eddie laughs and relinquishes Kinky Kringle to Richie so he can be returned to the window, where he watches over the neighborhood. He wanders over to the tree and clicks it on, watching the lights go from pink to teal. “Fancy.”

“The best Target had to offer, just for you, Eddie baby.”

Eddie rolls his eyes, smiling as he says, “You didn’t know I was coming.”

“No, but Fate did,” Richie says. He holds an arm toward the back of the house. “Shall I show you the kitchen, good sir?”

“Why thank you,” Eddie says, leading the way. After declaring the kitchen both sanitary and cozy due to the breakfast nook overlooking their sliver of a backyard, they head upstairs, where Richie introduces him to the full bathroom, Ben and Bev’s room (they observe the mix of their decor styles from the safety of the doorway), and finally they arrive at Richie’s room.

“Now this is familiar,” Eddie says, stepping into the mess. Richie had honestly tried to clean it when he and Ben tidied up the rest of the house, but it was too far gone. Eddie doesn’t comment on it any further, but he does comment on the pictures from Bev’s semester in a photography class. A lot of them are blurry, about half of them are of Richie and Ben doing mundane things around the city or in her dorm, and all of them make Richie smile for one reason or another. Bev has most of her copies in a folder somewhere; the picture of Ben spilling beer on Richie’s head is framed in her room.

Richie’s stomach rumbles while Eddie is looking at the knickknacks cluttering the dresser. Eddie raises an eyebrow at him.

“I’m sorry, did you say something?”

“Yes, I said, ‘I’m going to eat dinner and you’re not invited as long as you’re being mean to me.’”

“If you’re cooking, I definitely don’t regret being disinvited.”

Richie orders Chinese food from his and Bev’s favorite place, not because the food is the best but because their fortune cookies are the most absurd. Richie makes Eddie open his before they even take out the other food—it is a tradition of the household after all. 

“Green is not your color,” Eddie reads. He frowns at Richie. “Did this cookie just give me fashion advice?”

“Yes, and it’s right, your skin tone is much too yellow to wear green,” Richie says. He opens his and obligingly reads his fortune. “You only have two eyes. Shit, right again!”

Eddie laughs and takes the fortune, laughing louder when he sees Richie wasn’t making it up. “It’s like there’s supposed to be a second part but it got printed before anyone could think of anything.”

“You only have two eyes,” Richie says, thoughtfully crunching the cookie as he takes the containers out of the bag they came in. “That’s four times less than the average spider.”

“Let’s not talk about spiders over dinner,” Eddie says, opening drawers until he finds the silverware. He hands Richie a fork, takes the food Richie doesn’t pick up, and follows him out to the living room, where they argue about what to watch so long that half the food is gone before they finally settle on the Law & Order reruns that were on when Richie first turned on the TV. Richie definitely doesn’t have to sit this close to Eddie—the love seat is small but it’s not _that_ small—but Eddie also has half a cushion between himself and the arm of the couch, leaving them shoulder to shoulder in the dreaded middle sag as they eat and move from Eddie’s talk of The Most Boring Professor to ranking the detectives in all the Law & Order franchises. Richie is pretty sure it would’ve gotten ugly if they weren’t interrupted by Bev sending Richie a new picture of Ben’s mom’s dog.

Once they’ve eaten their body weights in lo mein and general tso’s, Richie puts on Frosty the Snowman over Eddie’s objection that the titular song is going to get stuck in his head.

“That’s part of the Christmas experience,” Richie says, and Eddie huffily relents.

The movie is only 25 minutes long, and it’s barely 8 o’clock, but Eddie falls asleep before the end of it, his feet tucked against the arm of the couch and his head on Richie’s shoulder. Riche manages to keep himself from fidgeting for the last half of the movie, but eventually his ever-bouncing legs win out and shake Eddie awake. Richie watches out of the corner of his eye as Eddie looks blearily at the TV, now playing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and then frowns at Richie.

“Frosty sure looks different,” he says, covering a yawn as the snowman sings Silver and Gold.

Richie smiles. “That’s what happens when you fall asleep, the whole animation style changes.”

Eddie hums, looking about two seconds from falling asleep again as he leans his head on the back of the couch.

“When did you get so old, Eds?” Richie asks, drawing another frown from Eddie. “We haven’t been apart that long, and you don’t even have gray hair.”

“You do realize it’s like eleven in New York time, right?” Eddie says. Through another yawn he adds, “And don’t call me Eds.”

“Eleven,” Richie scoffs, but he pauses the movie and gets off the couch, tugging Eddie with him. “Come on, time for senior citizens to go to bed.”

“You’re the one watching movies from the seventies,” Eddie says, letting Richie lead him up the stairs by the wrist. He stops them when Richie goes toward his bedroom. “Bev said I could sleep in her bed.”

“Do you really want to sleep in the bed where she and Ben make sweet, sweet love to each other?” Richie says.

Eddie makes a face. “Not now that you’ve made me think about it.”

“Then come on, do whatever extensive nighttime routine you have and go to sleep.”

“How much longer are you staying up?” Eddie asks.

“I don’t know,” Richie says. “I’ll keep the TV down if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No, just, when you come to bed you’re gonna wake me up anyway.”

Richie blinks at him. “You want to share the bed?”

“Well you aren’t gonna fit on that couch,” Eddie says. He looks slightly more awake than he had downstairs, but he’s still squinting from the light in the stairwell. “We used to sleep in the same twin bed; I really don’t care.”

“Okay,” Richie says before he even thinks about how band of an idea it is, and how it was an even worse idea back than. “I’ll just go to bed now, then.”

“Okay,” Eddie says, and then, “I left my bag downstairs.”

“I’ll get it,” Richie says. “Left the TV on anyway.”

Richie goes downstairs, tempted to dillydally, but Eddie will be annoyed if he falls asleep without brushing his teeth so he turns off the TV and the fiber optic tree, grabs Eddie’s bag, and returns to the second floor, where Eddie is leaning in the bathroom doorway. He mumbles a thank you when Richie hands over his stuff, and then Richie realizes he should probably change his sheets. He’s still wrestling with the fitted sheet when Eddie comes into the room wearing a t-shirt Richie thinks used to be Bill’s and pajama pants he’s had since high school.

“I’ll get it,” Eddie says. There’s a wet piece of hair curling on his forehead. Richie forces himself to look away from it. Eddie raises his eyebrows. “Go brush your teeth—I have a way with fitted sheets.”

“Of course you do,” Richie says.

“You can’t let it know you’re afraid of it,” Eddie tells him with a small, slightly smug smile. Richie goes to brush his teeth before he does anything stupid.

Eddie has conquered the fitted sheet when Richie gets back, and he’s exchanged the overhead light for the lamp set on a night stand that towers over the mattress-on-the-floor setup Richie has. He’s also settling in on the side of the bed opposite the nightstand, curled up with the comforter Richie’s had since he was three. Richie approaches as quietly as possible so as not to disturb him if he’s already asleep, but as he’s getting into the other side of the bed, Eddie mumbles, “It’s creepy when you’re quiet.”

“Oh, sorry, let me come back in like an elephant in cement shoes. You know, I’ve been working on a tap routine,” Richie says, halfway to getting up when Eddie grabs his arm and tugs him back down.

“I take it back,” Eddie says, holding onto Richie’s arm as he settles. “Love the quiet. Quiet’s the best.”

Richie huffs a laugh as he plugs his phone in. “Okay, Eds, quiet it is.”

Eddie past his arm before he takes his hand back and returns to his curled up position, his back to Richie, who turns off the light. He occupies himself with his phone, flipping between games and videos and reading random Wikipedia articles until Eddie rolls over, his face just barely lit by Richie’s screen. Richie watches him snore, his eyebrows drawn together even in his sleep, until his phone goes balck and he decides if he’s reached the level of blatantly staring at Eddie, he should probably go to sleep.

He wakes up when it’s still dark because his head abruptly changes elevations. “Mmf,” he says intelligently into the mattress. A pair of hands pat his head.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, and then Richie hears him walking out of the room before he can become more aware.

He recognizes that he’s not in the center of the mattress and the left side of his face is extra warm. Then he rolls over and checks the time, groaning when he sees it’s only 5:30. The doorway briefly lights up from the hall, and then Eddie is coming back in.

“Early!” Richie groans at him.

Eddie lets out a quiet laugh as he slides under the covers. “This is late for me.”

“You better be planning to go back to sleep,” Richie says, pressing his face in his pillow. “I’m not living on early shift time for you.”

Eddie laughs again, finally going still, and says, “Go back to sleep, Rich.”

Who is Richie not to oblige?

It’s light outside the next time he wakes up, which gives him ample opportunity to see that while he slept, he’d drifted back to the center of the bed, and now Eddie’s face is about two inches from his own. His hair has gotten long enough that some of it tickles Richie’s nose, and he edges back as gently as possible.

Eddie wakes up anyway, or maybe he was already awake, it’s hard for Richie to say before he’s put on his glasses, and by that time he’s already getting out of bed. Eddie frowns up at him—he wasn’t awake, then—and rolls on his back to do a full body stretch. Richie barely makes it out of the room alive.

The clock in the bathroom informs him that it’s now 7:30, which is still too early in Richie’s extremely correct opinion, but 7:30 here is 10:30 in New York, and Eddie is the type to get cranky if he gets too _much_ sleep, so Richie sucks it up and goes back to his room with the intent to ask Eddie what he wants for breakfast only to find that Eddie is gone and the coffeemaker is running downstairs. 

Richie makes his way to the kitchen, where Eddie has already poured himself a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. Richie joins him at the breakfast nook, because the coffee’s not done yet, propping his chin in his hand to watch Eddie eat. Eddie notices the staring with a dripping spoon halfway to his mouth, pauses, and makes a face at Richie. There are bits of chewed up cereal on his stuck-out tongue, which should be disgusting. Richie just smiles and makes a face back, sticking his fingers in the corners of his mouth to give himself a Joker smile while he crosses his eyes. Eddie snorts and then claims Richie is trying to kill him when it makes him choke. 

Once Richie has consumed most of a pot of coffee and a pack of PopTarts, they head out to do all the touristy shit they can fit in a day, because Eddie’s never been to California and Richie is more than happy to be the one to show him around.

Eddie surprises him by insisting they go on at least one cable car ride, so Richie takes them to the nearest stop and they ride out to the west side of the city, Richie prodding Eddie to hang on the outside with him until he eventually agrees and then grips the side of Richei’s shirt with the hand not on the pole because “If I get thrown off, you’re coming with me.”

Richie laughs and puts an arm around Eddie’s shoulders, and it seems to help him relax for the rest of the ride. Richie keeps up a running commentary, mentally tallying how many times he can slip in a lie about whatever they’re looking at—first to see if Eddie notices, and then because his blatantly false facts break Eddie’s focus to make him laugh and shove Richie away. 

They go to the Golden Gate Bridge and the Wharf, and Richie almost gets them lost in Chinatown but Eddie, human compass that he is, guides them back out. By the time they get back to the house, Richie is exhausted, and Eddie is nursing a headache from the cacophony of the cable cars. Still Eddie declares it a good day and also one he never wants to repeat. Richie laughs, lets him take a shower first—it’s December but the hills are still steep and they’d walked most of the day—and catches up on the texts from the other Losers he’d ignored most of the day, except to send pictures of Eddie at various tourist traps.

They go out again the next day to visit Alcatraz, which Eddie insists is haunted, and it’s nowhere near as exhausting as the day before. They still get back after dark, but that’s because Eddie wanted to do one of the night tours. Richie spent about half of it trying to make Eddie jump, which did not earn them any good will from the tour guide, but as far as Richie is concerned, pinching Eddie in the back outside the Birdman’s cell and getting him to squeak was a vital part of the experience. 

On the third day of Eddie’s visit, they drive to the airport to pick up Richie’s parents. They’re staying at a hotel in SoMa, but they come back to the house for dinner, and his mom makes plans for them to come back the next day to bake cookies. It’s terribly late in the season for Maggie Tozier, but she claims it isn’t the same without Richie inevitably dropping half the dough on the floor. Richie gets a long hug from his parents before they leave, and he smiles at the startled look on Eddie’s face when Maggie hugs him, too. 

“It’s always a pleasure to see you, Eddie,” she says. Went gives him a shorter, sideways hug with room to escape unlike the crush of his wife’s affection, and Richie gives them the car to drive themselves back to the hotel.

They watch live action Christmas movies this time—absolutely terrible ones with predictable plots and horrible dialogue—and Eddie falls asleep pressed against Richie’s side again. Richie quietly thinks that he’s never been happier and lets Eddie sleep until he wants to go to bed himself. Eddie was right: the loveseat is too small for Richie to get comfortable.

When Richie wakes up, Eddie is already out of bed and downstairs, and Richie can smell coffee and something sweet. He finds Eddie eating a stack of chocolate chip pancakes and frowns.

“Where the hell did you get those?” he asks.

“The freezer,” Eddie replies. His gaze tracks above Richie’s face. He smiles. “Nice hair.”

Richie grumbles and runs his hands through his hair as he goes to grab a mug. “Better?”

Judging by Eddie’s laugh, the answer is no. Richie turns around to Eddie standing right behind him. He holds still as Eddie reaches up to fix whatever disaster he’s made of his hair, head bowed so he can reach easier, which puts their faces close together. In his morning daze, Richie can’t help staring at Eddie’s mouth, where he’s biting down on a smile. Eddie smoothes a hand over his hair, tucking a piece behind his ear. Richie holds onto his coffee cup for dear life.

“There,” Eddie says, smile fading as Richie meets his eyes. “Richie, I—”

A knock on the door has them jumping apart, Richie nearly dropping his mug in shock.

“Your mom,” Eddie says, and Richie thinks he’s making some kind of joke until his brain catches up and he remembers—oh yeah, they’re making cookies today. “I’ll get it.”

“No, finish your breakfast,” Richie says, catching him by the sleeve. He sets the mug on the counter and leaves before Eddie can do more than open his mouth. Richie doesn’t know if Eddie would have argued had he not run away. He gives himself exactly two seconds to freak out before he opens the door. “Look who came crawling back,” he says, making his father laugh and his mother roll her eyes.

Eddie is invited to the cookie-making activities while Richie’s dad recuses himself in favor of reading whatever book he’d decided suits a trip to San Francisco. Richie puts on a classic Christmas music playlist as his mom unpacks all the necessary ingredients and organizes them on the freshly cleaned counter (because apparently letting it go untouched for four days means it needs to be cleaned all over again). 

While the butter softens on the stovetop, Maggie tells Eddie about the recipe, which she no longer needs to look at, and how the cookie-making tradition came from her great-grandmother in Germany, and her own mother kept up the tradition when they emigrated to the States. Nobody brings up what Richie likes to refer to as The Great Schism, so all in all it’s a good time. 

Each of them get their own volcanoes (“It’s a well,” Maggie tells Eddie. Richie shakes his head behind her back. Eddie smiles) of flour and eggs and everything.

“This is going to make like 300 cookies,” Richie says.

“So be it,” Maggie replies.

Eddie powers through the beginning stages of mixing, where he’s forced to confront the texture of the eggs, by telling Maggie about how school is going and what his favorite classes are. Richie keeps cracking up because he can hear the spaces where Eddie would normally be cursing, and hearing him stutter through “fuh—reaking” is just too much.

Once the dough is mixed, they join Went in the living room to kill time while the dough chills. Richie and Eddie wind up on the window seat by default, and as they talk, a part of Richie can’t help imagining if this was their place, if they were hosting the holidays for Richie’s parents, if down the line they’d be hosting the other Losers, too. Every time Eddie laughs, he rocks into Richie’s side. Richie wants to grab him and never let go.

Maggie moves into a more supervisory position during the actual rolling and cutting of the dough, drifting back to the kitchen from the living room only to retrieve the different batches from the oven.

“Do you wanna know the best part of making these cookies?” Richie asks when his mom settles for another stint in the living room.

“Decorating them?” Eddie guesses.

As demonstration, Richie takes a piece of the dough leftover from the last rounds of shapes he cut, balls it up, and dips it in the pile of flour for the cookie cutters before popping it in his mouth. “ _Mm_ ,” he says, smiling in the face of Eddie’s horror.

“You are going to get sick,” Eddie says.

“I haven’t gotten sick before,” Richie replies with a shrug, taking another chunk of dough. Since they’ve been working with it, it’s warm, practically melting the second he puts it in his mouth. It tastes like all his childhood Christmases (minus The Great Schism) rolled into one. “Seriously, it’s better then the actual baked cookies.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” Eddie replies, nose wrinkled as he returns his focus to cutting out more bells and transferring them to the baking sheet.

“Come on, Eds, live a little,” Richie says, offering him a ball of dough.

Eddie gives him a flat look, balling up the remnants of his dough and pressing it into a rollable disk. “Don’t call me that, and especially not when you’re trying to peer pressure me into eating raw eggs _and_ raw flour.”

Richie hunches closer and waves the dough in Eddie’s face. “All the cool kids are doing it,” he says in a rough, low Voice.

Eddie bats him away with the hand that had grabbed the rolling pin, knocking one end into the side of Richie’s face with a loud _clack_ that Richie thinks are his bones snapping. Then he realizes it was the impact of the handle against his glasses, which now sit askew. They both stand frozen for a moment. Richie’s eyes start watering before he registers the pain in his face, and then he brings a hand up like he expects to feel if it’s going to bruise.

“Oh my god,” Eddie says, unfreezing to drop the rolling pin and hover his hands over Richie’s now-throbbing face. Richie opens his mouth, working his jaw, and can’t help the pained noise he makes when it stretches what is almost definitely a budding bruise. “Richie, I am so sorry, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Richie says, allowing Eddie to straighten his glasses. He watches Eddie open the freezer and come back with a bag of mixed vegetables. “Did your sudden violence work up an appetite?”

Eddie gives him an impatient look as he gently pulls Richie’s hand away from his cheek. He inspects the area of impact for a second before he presses the vegetables to it. “So your face doesn’t swell up, moron,” he says, still sounding slightly panicked.

Richie puts his hand over the one Eddie is using to hold the vegetables in place. “I don’t think you hit me that hard.”

“Your cheek is already turning purple,” Eddie informs him.

“Shit,” Richie says. Good thing he doesn’t have to go back to work until after Christmas.

“What did I miss?” Maggie asks as she enters the kitchen, making Eddie jump.

“Ow,” Richie says mildly as what he’s fairly certain is a slice of carrot digs into his cheekbone.

“Sorry,” Eddie says, eyebrow knit together as he snatches his hand away. 

Richie almost drops the makeshift ice pack. He turns to face his mom. “Don’t worry, Mother, Eddie’s just beating me with the rolling pin, but to be fair to him, I did try to make him eat raw dough.”

He lets his mother look at the side of his face, trying to shoot Eddie a look that says _seriously, I don’t care that you hit me with a rolling pin_ , because Eddie looks on the verge of wringing his hands off his wrists. For once, Richie is glad for his glasses, or else the handle of the rolling pin would’ve given him a black eye. 

“You’ll be fine,” Maggie determines, replacing the vegetables gently. She turns to Eddie with a smile. “You didn’t swing like you meant it.”

“Definitely not,” Eddie says.

“Then no harm done,” Maggie says, looking to Richie, who nods confirmation. Eddie doesn’t relax until Maggie engages him about the cookies, putting him to work on filling the jelly tarts. Richie is sent to the living room for a break as they finish the last batch of dough; his face stops hurting after a few minutes of icing it, but he’s more than fine with reclining next to his dad and pestering him about his book. In return, his dad pesters him about his job and his efforts to break into the standup scene. 

Eddie joins them once all the dough has been used up. If they were just with Ben and Bev, Richie thinks he would’ve caught Eddie as he passed and pulled him into his lap, just to hear the contrast between his irritation at being manhandled and his near-inevitable laughter. As it is, Richie just kicks his ankle and watches him settle back on the window seat.

They take a break for lunch, and to let the cookies cool, and then Went joins in for the decorations, or at least for the first half before it starts getting dark and Richie’s parents have had enough. His mom takes a bag of cookies when they go, at least one decorated by each of them.

“I think I’m about done, too,” Richie says after he’s walked them out.

“Okay,” Eddie says, and they clean up the kitchen while Richie plays Dean Martin’s Christmas album.

When they’re done, Richie stops in front of Eddie and says, “How’s my face lookin’, Dr. K? Handsome as ever?”

Eddie puts a hand under Richie’s chin to get him to tilt his head in the light. “Still red, but not too much more purple. Does it hurt?”

“If I say yes, will you kiss it better?” Richie asks, doing his best to leer while Eddie’s thumb strokes the unbruised part of his jaw.

“Yes,” Eddie says.

Richie blinks as Eddie meets his eyes. “Oh,” he says. He stops himself from moving out of Eddie’s grip. “Kinda makes me wish it still hurt.”

Eddie looks torn between smiling and frowning for a second. The smile wins out. He sweeps his thumb over Richie’s skin once more before he drops his hand. “Oh,” he says.

If Richie were braver, he’d kiss him. As it is, he clears his throat and says, “So...Die Hard?”

Eddie’s smile dims for a second—Richie is an idiot in addition to a coward—before it returns to its former brightness. “Die Hard,” he confirms.

Richie thinks about kissing him for the rest of the night.

The next morning is Christmas Eve. Richie wakes up before Eddie, has a peaceful moment of watching Eddie sleep, and then it hits him: it’s Christmas Eve, which is really Christmas as far as Richie is concerned, and Richie doesn’t have a present for Eddie. He didn’t know he’d be _seeing_ Eddie, but there’s Eddie, right in front of his face, and Richie doesn’t have anything to give him.

“Stop,” Eddie mumbles, making Richie jump. Eddie opens one eye to frown at him. “I can hear you thinking.”

“I don’t have a Christmas present for you,” Richie blurts, so fast it’s basically one word.

Eddie squints at him. “What?”

“I don’t have a Christmas present for you,” Richie repeats. “I didn’t know you’d actually be here, and then I was so distracted by you being here that I didn’t even think of it until now.”

Eddie stares at him for a few silent seconds before he sighs and rolls to face him. “I’m going to say something to you, and you are not allowed to make fun of me for it.”

“Okay,” Richie says when Eddie pauses.

“I don’t need a present,” Eddie says. “I’m happy just getting to spend time with you.”

It’s Richie’s turn to stare in silence. “Eddie,” he says without inflection.

“Don’t,” Eddie warns.

“Eds,” Richie says, letting a smile spread across his face.

“ _No_ ,” Eddie says, rolling away.

“You care!” Richie says, sitting up to lean over Eddie’s shoulders as he tries to pull the covers over his head. “You like spending time with me! I’m a _gift_!”

“I should’ve hit you harder yesterday,” Eddie says, relinquishing his hold on the blankets. Richie curls over his back to look at him upside down as he grins.

“You really don’t want anything?” Richie asks. Without his glasses, he can only see the vaguest impression of Eddie’s features: here’s the line of his eyebrows, the dark of his eyes, the pink of his lips.

“Silence,” Eddie says after a second. “I want silence. Specifically yours.”

“Liar,” Richie says and pinches his cheek. Eddie shoves him away and climbs out of bed. Richie flops back and watches him go. “I know you love me, Eddie!”

Eddie holds out an arm on his way out the door. “That’s me flipping you off,” he says. 

Richie laughs in delight.

He stops teasing once they head down for breakfast. Since Christmas Eve is really Christmas, Richie insists they both start and end their day with the horrible Christmas movies marathoning on TV. The first one has Eddie yelling at the screen like he’s watching some kind of sport, except what he’s yelling is, “Who has never heard of meatloaf! And why does nobody recognize an Australian accent? Does Australia not exist in this world?!”

Richie almost chokes on his cinnamon toast—the traditional Christmas breakfast in the Tozier house, because cinnamon _rolls_ have too much sugar—when Eddie loses it again in the next five minutes of the movie.

“He _showed up_ at her _house_?!”

“I think it’s her parents’ house actually,” Richie says just as the main character says the same thing, and then the prince—because of course he’s a prince—asks if he should be _spying_ on her.

“What the FUCK,” Eddie yells.

Halfway through the movie, Eddie calls it quits. “I can’t do this,” he says, throwing his hands up as he escapes to the kitchen. “I’m going to develop an aneurysm if I have to keep watching this.”

He starts in on the remaining undecorated cookies, and Richie joins him, sitting so he can see the TV and update him on the movie as they decorate. It causes the death of an unsuspecting cookie man and cookie angel, but Richie, crying with laughter, thinks it’s worth it.

They go out with his parents for lunch, doing some more small-scale sightseeing afterwards, and then they all return to the house for The Making Of Roladin. Traditionally, Richie has been charged with filling the roladin, his father with of chopping onions and pickles, and his mother with the actual rolling and searing of the roladin. They keep the same tasks, but Eddie is also conscripted to filling duty, which basically means he adds the salt, pepper, and mustard while Richie handles the bacon, pickles, and onions. Like a well-oiled machine, they get the roladin in the oven in record time, and then it’s just a matter of waiting and, later, making the dumplings.

Once their arteries are one step closer to being clogged, they retire to the living room, where Richie’s parents produce two gifts: one with a garish surfing Santa wrapping paper and the other a much calmer royal blue with shiny silver snowflakes. Richie runs upstairs to get the terribly wrapped presents he’d gotten for his parents, following Eddie’s instructions to get another two gifts from his bag. When he returns, the gifts are distributed, and Richie shoots Eddie a look when one of the presents from his bag ends up in his lap. Eddie just smiles and thanks Richie’s parents before he’s even started in on the wrapping paper.

For once in his life, Richie doesn’t rip the wrapping paper to shreds, but only because he wants to make a vest out of it for Kinky Kringle. He opens the box to find one of the ugliest button-up shirts he’s ever seen, looking like something even the eighties wouldn’t have touched. He puts it on immediately, and Eddie makes a show of shielding his eyes. Eddie’s box contains a fancy-looking watch that leaves him looking shocked, so Richie assumes it doesn’t only _look_ fancy. He puts it on like he’s worried he’ll break it and thanks Richie’s parents very seriously.

From Eddie, Richie receives a kids’ joke book—“To help you write your sets,” Eddie says, making Went laugh—and a braided leather bracelet with pink, blue, and purple stripes on the metal clasps. Richie also insists on wearing the bracelet immediately, getting Eddie to put it on with the friendship bracelets Bev’s made for him.

Richie got his parents trinkets from the Wharf: a shark tooth paperweight for his dad and a crab holding a heart above its head for his mom. Eddie got them an equally touristy gift of Empire State Building salt and pepper shakers, getting shy when Maggie thanks him. She laughs and gives him a hug. Richie’s love for ugly things did, in fact, come from his mother and her insistence on bringing back the most kitschy souvenirs she can find in every trip.

His parents leave not long after that.

“Your father needs a nap to stay up through midnight Mass,” Maggie says as she hugs Richie goodbye. She gives Eddie another hug, and Richie gets another flash of the imaginary life where he and Eddie are together, but this time, he decides he’s going to do something about it.

“I don’t think I ever have to eat again,” Eddie says, collapsing on the couch once Richie’s parents are gone.

“I could go for seconds,” Richie says, dropping next to him. “Maybe some dessert. How about hot chocolate and a whole plate of cookies?”

“Ugh,” Eddie says, turning away from Richie. “Between that suggestion and that shirt, I’m going to throw up.”

Richie grins, holding the shirt out to admire it. “It’s pretty great, isn’t it?”

“It’s something alright,” Eddie says. Richie can hear the smile.

“Hey,” Richie says, heart racing in the second it takes Eddie to look at him with his eyebrows raised in a question. Richie kisses him.

He hears Eddie take in a sharp breath, and then his hands are on Richie’s neck and he’s kissing back.

It’s a soft kiss, and a short one, and Richie’s glasses get in the way, but when he pulls back he can’t stop smiling, and Eddie is smiling back.

“Merry Christmas, Eds,” Richie says.

Eddie pulls him close for another kiss, longer than the first one. “Merry Christmas, Dick.”

Richie laughs and wraps his arms around Eddie’s shoulders, pressing his smile to Eddie’s neck while Eddie’s arms link behind his back. He thinks it’s safe to call this his best Christmas yet.

**Author's Note:**

> in all my years of writing, this is the fic that has caused me the most pain, not for any kind of angst but because i decided to write it by hand and ended up with a whopping 15 pages. rip 2 my hand.  
> the movie that eddie is yelling about is called a christmas princess. it's one of those ion originals and the first twenty minutes alone were absolutely bonkers, but not as crazy as that one where the snowman comes to life. unfortunately i didn't remember enough about that one to have eddie roast it.  
> oh and if u caught any typos feel free to let me know.  
> merry holidays if ur the type to celebrate


End file.
